Center:
Your child isn't keeping up with his classmates at school. Homework time is challenging and the teacher has suggested you look into hiring a tutor or learning center. Where do you start and what do you look for?

National Brand Learning Centers
These centers are national or regional and they operate as individual franchises. They include names like Sylvan Learning Centers and Huntington Learning Centers. The centers normally employ licensed teachers to tutor students after hours. The costs for services can be pretty steep, and many people report having spent thousands on services. On the other hand, many people report that the cost was well worth it. It’s an investment in your future success!

These services do extensive evaluations through a series of tests to identify where each student needs to re-learn some basic skills—the skills that are needed before students can learn more advanced math and language skills. While it is beneficial to go through the process of reviewing and reinforcing skills that were learned in previous grades, it does extend the time the student spends with a tutor. That means it can become pretty expensive.

There are many message boards and parents’ discussion groups on the Internet that address specific learning centers. It’s a good idea to go online to read independent reviews of specific services before signing a contract.

Local Independent Learning Center
Local tutoring centers can offer everything that national centers offer at a lower price. These centers also often hire teachers as tutors—although the quality of the centers will vary from location to location. As always, do some investigating before you sign a contract!

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An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
Robrt A. Humphrey